Read More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory for Free Online

ordering a relationship from a catalog. Leave space for them to grow, and don't freak out if they grow in ways you didn't expect.
    APPROACHES TO RELATIONSHIPS
    Hidden within different types of polyamorous relationship structures are some very different ideas about relationships in general: about autonomy, community, entwinement, romance, sex and partnership. Poly people tend to speak of these different approaches as existing on two axes. One axis runs from "free agent" to "community-oriented." The other runs from "solo" to "entwined." They sound alike, but they are not.
    Some poly people consider themselves free agents. That is, they value personal autonomy highly, place importance on the ability to make their own decisions, and present to the world as able to act without requiring permission from others. The model of free-agent poly can be difficult at first to understand. It's easy to make the mistake of thinking that free agents don't commit, or don't consider the needs of their lovers (a.k.a. metamours), or don't care about community. This isn't true. In reality, the free-agent model places responsibility for decision-making, and for bearing the consequences, on each person individually.
    For instance, your partners may tell you how they feel about your desire to start a new relationship, and you may listen to them and decide not to go ahead with it based on what they say; but the choice is yours, not theirs. You evaluate their concerns, and then you choose. The extreme end of free agency is called "relationship anarchy," or RA. It's an approach that rejects the need to categorize and rank relationships at all ("Joe is my friend; Mark is my boyfriend; Keyser is my husband") or to create rules or define roles. In particular, RA does not privilege sexual or romantic relationships over others.
    On the opposite end of the scale is what some call a community-oriented model of polyamory. People who adopt this model focus on the interconnectedness of their relationships and their community. You might think the difference between free agents and community-oriented polyamorists is about independent action vs. consensus, but that's overly simplistic. Free agents, and particularly relationship anarchists, emphasize the need for negotiation and mutual benefit over the idea that there's a "normal" or "right" way to have relationships. It might be more accurate to say the difference is in the priority that's given to different factors in the decision-making process; community-minded poly folks tend to prioritize the impact of a decision on the entire group over the needs of the individuals in the group. This doesn't necessarily mean that community-oriented people must have their partners' permission to start a relationship. However, decisions are made with an eye toward how, say, a potential new partner might fit with the others.
    The other axis, from solo polyamory to entwined poly, looks similar on the surface but reflects a completely different underlying set of values. People who embrace solo poly present to the world as single at first glance. They are off the "relationship escalator": the assumption that relationships follow a defined course. You meet, fall in love, move in together, share property, have children and grow old together. Solo poly folks may not want to live with any partner, or if they do, they may not choose to share finances or property.
    By contrast, other people prefer relationships that are more entwined: practically, financially or both. These people value sharing living space, spending time in close proximity, sharing financial or household obligations, and so on. They may see themselves as part of a unit, a single family that shares responsibilities together and approaches life together.
    So the scale from free agency to community, then, is about decision-making within a relationship, whereas the scale from solo poly to entwined poly is about the form that the relationships will take.
    Few are on the extreme